


I Burn, I Pine, I Perish

by Erea



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I lived bitch, Mutual Pining, jasons alive but reader doesn’t know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25117060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erea/pseuds/Erea
Summary: Jason didn’t expect you to be visiting his grave after all this time. He did expect that it would kill him all over again to see you.
Relationships: Jason Todd/Reader, Jason Todd/You
Comments: 9
Kudos: 176





	I Burn, I Pine, I Perish

Jason’s surprised you still visit his grave after all these years. Do you still miss him, or have you moved on? Do you only visit because you feel guilty? He wonders if you have a new boyfriend, and if the new boyfriend knows about him. Jason feels sick at the thought, either thought, either way, thinking about you with someone else.

Do you still think about him every day? He remembers how it felt. He thought about you when he woke up and the other side of his bed was empty, or when he fought villains as Robin, or when he walked alone and let his mind wander; fuck, he even thought about you subconsciously, and his dreams were once filled with images of your eyes and lips and hands. He still dreams about you, sometimes, in the tenuous snatches of sleep he gets.

You’re crying, he notices. He can’t see your face - he’s almost glad, he doesn’t want to see how much grief has changed your features - but he sees it in the way your shoulders shake. How often do you cry over him? A vision of you finding out about his death, of you crumpling to the floor and wailing, flashes through Jason’s mind and he thinks he hates himself just a little bit more now.

He finds it odd that you’d still cry at his grave. As much as he knows you loved him, knows it wouldn’t be fair to deny it because you loved him with everything you had, all he’s been able to think about for weeks is how Bruce must have turned you against his memory. Jason was so sure of it. He was so sure that Bruce would have manipulated you into pretending nothing ever happened. He knows it’s what Bruce did for himself.

But not you. If he revealed himself to you now, what would you do? If he stepped out from the tree line and came up behind you and wrapped you in his embrace - and God, a part of him wants to so, so badly - would you believe it was him? Maybe a tiny piece of you still believes he’s alive: maybe you haven’t given up hope.

Jason watches you kneel at his gravestone and sob. You have a bouquet of flowers clutched in your hand. Tulips. He’d brought you a similar bunch the night before he left for Lebanon. He remembers scraping together the change he’d allowed to build up in his pocket (he’d refused to take an allowance from Bruce, even when he was young and fresh off the streets), and finding the nicest flower shop in Gotham he could afford.

He didn’t know he’d die, of course. Stupidly, he’d thought that finding his mother, maybe making steps to fix his fucked-up family life a little, would’ve given him the courage to come clean to you. He’d wanted to tell you he loved you, he really did. He’d known how you felt even though you’d never said - _because_ you’d never said, because he knew you like the back of his own hand. The flowers were meant to be a down payment. 

Fucking _stupid_.

The last thing he thought of before the blast was your smile. Would it comfort you to know that? Jason knows that’s a stupid question: it’s not like he’ll ever get the chance to tell you. 

He wants to see you, to hold you, to love you again. He does. But his plans dictate otherwise; you’ll want nothing to do with him after he becomes Red Hood, and you’ll want him dead after he’s finished with Bruce. How could you not?

Perhaps it’s better you never find out he’s back. It’ll destroy you more, and kindle that spark of hope he knows burns in your chest into something more. And then he’ll just have to extinguish it all over again. He won’t hurt you like that again.

It starts to rain, and you don’t move. Jason just watches as the earth turns to mud, and all you do is slump against the smooth marble of his gravestone. Why do you look so exhausted? Maybe you’ve been forced to keep yourself too busy to sleep since he died, or maybe you’re woken up by nightmares every time you do sleep. Maybe you’re simply tired of loving a dead man. He knows he’s tired of being a dead man loving a living person.

You’re the one thing that makes him wonder if he could return to being Jason Peter Todd. You’re the only thing in the universe that makes him even consider wanting to. 

It’s not until you’re soaked through to the bone, shivering so violently from the freezing rain and broken sobs that rack your body that Jason can see it even from his distance, not until Jason himself starts to fucking cry, that Dick appears. Jason watches his brother - who looks so much older and haunted now - scoop you up into his arms, and you press your face into his neck, and Dick walks you away towards the car. The tulips you brought lie wilting under the weight of the rain at the base of the gravestone.

Jason almost misses it through his own hot, thick tears and the falling sheets of rain. Later, he’ll find himself wishing he had missed it. But, for now, as you turn from the car - just for a moment - to spare one last look at Jason’s grave, he sees your face. He takes in your swollen lips and puffy cheeks and dark circles all in one split second: and, God, the devastation scrawled across your face shows him that you still love him so much it hurts. Then you’re gone.

He turns, and leaves.


End file.
